Over the last two years, 48 people in Washington state have died in watercraft accidents. According to the state, 77% of those people were not wearing a life jacket.
Officials said the idea that you can swim to safety is dead wrong, especially in our state’s cold waters.
“If the people who got in trouble on the water were wearing life jackets, they would be alive today,” said Derek Van Dyke with Washington State Parks & Recreation Commission. “You can be an Olympic swimmer, you can be someone who doesn’t swim at all, it’s probably going to happen where you ingest water. Within the first two, three seconds, if you ingest water, go underwater, and then you drown.
“We’ve taken high school and collegiate swimmers out into cold water on Puget Sound, and they can’t swim 25 meters. You know they might be the 25-meter state champion, and they get on the cold water and their body just shuts down,” said Sergeant Rich Barton with the King County Sheriff’s Office marine rescue unit.
KIRO 7 got a chance to check the temperatures in Lake Washington and Sammamish on Wednesday. Both were around 52 degrees, which rescuers said would give anyone less than an hour to survive hypothermia, even with a life jacket. Both men said the water in the rivers will not warm up, and cold water shock is something they expect to see as soon as the weather warms.
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